Thomas Hudson, (born 1701, Devon, Eng.—died Jan. 26, 1779, Twickenham, Middlesex, Eng.) English portrait painter, who forms an important link in the apostolic succession of English portrait painters and was praised by contemporaries for his ability to catch a likeness.

Hudson was a pupil of Jonathan Richardson, whose daughter he married, and the young Joshua Reynolds was bound apprentice to him in October 1740. Hudson began to receive notice in the early 1730s, and by 1742 he was one of the most successful of the portrait painters working in London; he painted members of the royal family and “abundance of Persons of Quality.” A large number of his portraits were engraved. He probably retired from active practice before 1760.

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...counting many of the finest British authors of the 18th century among his closest friends. Reynolds early aspired to become an artist, and in 1740 he was apprenticed for four years in London to Thomas Hudson, a conventional portraitist and the pupil and son-in-law of Jonathan Richardson. In 1743 he returned to Devon and began painting at Plymouth naval portraits that reveal his...

Wright was trained as a portrait painter by Thomas Hudson in the 1750s. Wright’s home was Derby, one of the great centres of the birth of the Industrial Revolution, and his depictions of scenes lit by moonlight or candlelight combine the realism of the new machinery with the romanticism involved in its application to industry and science. His pictures of technological subjects, partly inspired...